Emergency room practice among family physicians

An attempt was made to determine the extent to which physicians trained and certified in family medicine are involved in emergency medicine. An 18-item, self-report questionnaire was mailed to 73 graduates of a family practice residency program to obtain information on their practices, their professional and emergency medicine experiences, and their attitudes toward the practice of emergency medicine by family practitioners. Ten percent of the 60 responding physicians were currently involved in full-time emergency medicine in either emergency rooms or minor emergency clinics. Twenty-eight percent of the respondents were currently practicing emergency medicine on either a part-time or sporadic basis. Supplemental income was cited the most often as a reason for becoming involved in emergency medicine. Only variables related to the physicians' attitudes discriminated between those who were practicing emergency medicine and those who were not.